Low fidelity; square eyes

Our television critic's weekly squint at what's best on the boxA Many Splintered Thing Tuesday, 10pm, BBC1 Adultery was once considered too dark for sitcom. But with the addition of shaggy- haired funnyman Alan Davies, extra-marital liasions have become strangely acceptable

MARKS and Gran, the veteran comedy writers who gave us Birds of a Feather, said they wrote Goodnight Sweetheart as a way of tackling adultery in a mainstream sitcom. They presumed that their audience would be repulsed by the sordid mechanics of an affair, which necessarily involves lying and betrayal. This is a staple of melodrama, but it's trickier to pull off in a cosy comedy.

So the writers cleverly contrived a scenario where Nicholas Lyndhurst could shuttle between his married life in the present day and a girl who knew how to have fun during a blackout in war-time London. He just had to to keep her in nylon stockings, which was no problem with an M&S round the corner in his other life. It was still an adulterous affair, but the time-travel device distanced the audience from the fact.

But times must have changed, because a new BBC1 sitcom called A Many Splintered Thing has all the sordid mechanics of infidelity, right down to the itemised phone bills and the strain of running two sex lives. Blow me, there's even an oral sex joke in the opening five minutes.

Russell Boyd is an unsuccessful composer who's reduced to writing jingles for dog food ads while his power-dressed wife brings home the serious bacon to pay for a house which looks as if it has been attacked by Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen. For Russell this is an emasculating experience - career failure, not the interior decor, though that probably doesn't help. So what does he do? He has an affair, of course.

Elly (Kate Ashfield) is introduced as the kind of irrepressible chick with whom it would be impossible not to have an affair. She is shown extensively in her underwear - and we're not talking M&S nylons now - to underline the point. "I know it's wrong but you should try to think of me as a reactive adulterer," says Russell's voice-over. In other words, the boy can't help it.

Russell Boyd is, in tabloid speak, a love rat which is not a species that works well in sitcom. Too close to real life. While Goodnight Sweetheart had the time travel thing and Lyndhurst as cushions against the reality of adultery, A Many Splintered Thing has its own secret weapon that allows the audience snuggle up to a man who trashes his marriage vows - Alan Davies.

The unlikely star of Jonathan Creek has an on-screen persona so devoid of sexuality that the idea of any woman allowing him to make physical contact seems unlikely, let alone that they might have pillow-chewingly good time in bed. Calling Alan Davies a "shag" would normally be expected to refer to his hearth-rug hair.

But what this promising new sitcom has done is put its finger on the latest incarnation of the male. After New Man and his fun-lovin' nephew, the New Lad, Davies gives us New Little Boy. NLB's tactic for pulling women is to be so endearingly pathetic that they fail to spot the libido lurking beneath that can't-tie-his-own-shoelaces exterior. You could say that women have taken their eye off the balls.

The cools guys used to be the ones that didn't have to try too hard; now it seems a chap can get the girl without bothering to try at all. A Many Splintered Thing is Bridget Jones viewed from the reverse angle. Women writers have peddled the myth that all the available men are either married or gay to the point where even guys like Alan Davies can pull a perky lingerie model.

The clever thing about this show is that it makes the Davies character endearing, even though everything he does is childish and reprehensible. Some women may feel that the show indulges the little boy in every man, but I can't help but feel that he - us! - have been well and truly skewered.

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